Echoes From the Dead (34 page)

“Okay,” said Lennart. He took out a notepad and pen. “Tell me.”

“He was here,” said John tersely.

“In Stenvik?”

John nodded.

“And you were here too? Can you give him an alibi for

that day?”

John shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a long time ago,” he said.

“I don’t remember… but in the evening we were out searching along the shore. Both of us. I do remember that.”

“So do I,” said Gerlof.

Even if many other memories of that evening were very hazy,

he had a picture in his head of John and his son, who must have been around twenty at the time, walking side by side southward along the shore.

“And in the afternoon?” said Lennart. “What was Anders doing then?”

“Don’t remember,” said John. “He might have been out.

But he certainly wasn’t up near Gerlof’s cottage.” John looked at Gerlof. “There’s no evil in my son, Gerlof.”

Gerlof nodded. “Nobody thinks there is.”

“Anyway, we need to talk to him,” Lennart said. “Is he here?”

“He’s in Borgholm,” said John. “He went down yesterday after the funeral.”

“Does he live there?”

“Sometimes he does… with his mother. Sometimes he lives

here with me. He pleases himself. He doesn’t drive, so he catches the bus there and back.”

“How old is he now?”

“He’s fortytwo.”

“Fortytwo … and he lives at home?”

“It’s no crime.“John pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.

“And he’s got his own cottage, just behind mine.”

“I think,” Gerlof interjected tentatively, “… that we might say Anders is a little bit special. Don’t you agree, John? He’s kind and helpful, but he’s a little bit different.”

“I’ve met Anders a couple of times,” said Lennart. “He seemed perfectly capable to me.”

John looked straight ahead, his neck rigid. “Anders keeps

himself to himself,” he said. “He thinks a lot. Doesn’t talk much, not to me and not to anybody else. But there’s no evil in him.”

“And his address?” said Lennart.

John gave them the address of an apartment on Kopmansgatan.

Lennart wrote it down.

“Good,” he said. “Well, we won’t disturb you any longer,

John. We’ll get back to Marnas now.”

The last sentence was directed at Gerlof. He had seen the

blind fear beginning to grow in John’s eyes during the conversation.

The fear that Authority, circling high above like a bird of

prey, had finally spotted him and his only son up in the desolation of northern Oland, and would never let go of them again.

“There’s no evil in my son,” John repeated, despite the fact that Lennart was on his way to the door.

“There’s nothing to worry about, John,” said Gerlof quietly, not sounding in the least convincing. “We’ll have a chat on the phone tonight? Would that be okay?”

John nodded, but he was still looking tensely at Lennart, who stood waiting in the doorway.

“Come on, Gerlof,” he said.

It sounded like an order. Gerlof didn’t even feel like a policeman any longer, more like a lapdogbut he got up obediently and followed Lennart outside. He would really have liked to go and visit his daughter at Astrid’s, but that would have to wait until another time.

Gerlof’s muscles were trembling more than usual as he walked back to his room; the pain in his joints was also worse than usual.

Lennart had brought him back to the home.

He could hear the telephone ringing through the door, and

didn’t think he’d get there in time, but it kept on ringing.

“Davidsson?”

“It’s me.”

It was John.

“How are things?”

Gerlof sat down heavily on the bed.

John didn’t say anything.

“Have you spoken to Anders?” asked Gerlof.

“Yes. I phoned him in Borgholm. I’ve spoken to him.”

“Good. Maybe you shouldn’t tell him that the police want to”

“It’s too late,” John broke in. “I told him the police had been here.”

“Right,” said Gerlof. “And what did he say?”

“Nothing. He just listened.”

Silence.

“John … I think we both know what Anders was doing at

Vera Kant’s. What he was looking for in the cellar,” said Gerlof.

“The soldiers’ treasure. The spoils of war everybody believed they had with them when they came ashore on Oland.”

“Yes,” said John.

“The treasure Nils Kant took from them,” Gerlof went on, “if that’s what happened.”

“Anders has been talking about it for many years,” said John.

“He’s not going to find it,” said Gerlof. “I know that.”

John was silent again.

“We need to go to Ramneby,” Gerlof went on. “To the sawmill

and the wood museum. We can go tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” said John. “I have to go to Borgholm to get

Anders.”

“Next week, then. When the museum is open. And afterwards

maybe we can stop off in Borgholm and see how Martin Malm is.”

“Fine,” said John.

“We’re going to find Nils Kant, John,” Gerlof told him.

It was almost nine o’clock that same evening. The corridors of the home were hushed and empty.

Gerlof was standing outside Maja Nyman’s closed door, leaning on his cane. There wasn’t a sound from her room. On the door was a little handwritten note, which said: please knock! john 10:7.

” ‘Truly I say unto you: I am the door of the sheepfold,’ “

murmured Gerlof to himself.

He hesitated for a moment, then raised his right hand and

knocked.

It took a while, but eventually Maja opened the door. They

had seen each other at dinner a few hours earlier, and she was still wearing the same yellow skirt and white blouse.

“Good evening,” said Gerlof with a gentle smile. “I just wanted to see if you were home.”

“Gerlof.”

Maja smiled and nodded, but Gerlof thought he could see a

tense furrow among all the others in her forehead, beneath her white hair. His visit was unexpected.

“May I come in?” he asked.

She nodded a little hesitantly, and stepped back into the

room.

“I haven’t tidied up,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter at all,” said Gerlof.

Leaning on his cane, he walked slowly into the room, which

looked just as clean and tidy as the last time he’d been there. A dark red Persian rug covered most of the floor, and the walls were full of portraits and pictures.

Gerlof had been in Maja’s room a number of times. They had

had a relationship, which had begun a few months after Gerlof’s arrival at the home and ended a year or so later, when the pain of his Sjogren’s syndrome became too severe. After that they had continued a quiet friendship which was still strong. Both of them came from Stenvik; both had been left alone after a long marriage.

They had plenty to talk about together.

“How are you feeling, Maja?”

“Fine. I’m keeping well.”

Maja pulled out a chair at the small brown table by the window, and Gerlof sat down gratefully. Maja sat down as well, and a silence fell.

Gerlof had to say something.

“I was just wondering, Maja, if you could tell me about something we talked about once before…”

He reached into his pocket and took out the little white envelope Julia had given him the week before.

“My daughter found this letter in the churchyard, by Nils

Kant’s gravestone. I know you wrote it and put it there, that isn’t what I wanted to ask you about. I’m just wondering …”

“I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” said Maja quickly.

“Absolutely not,” said Gerlof. “I didn’t”

“Nils never gets the best bunch of flowers,” said Maja. “My

husband always gets that… I always see to Helge’s grave first, before I tidy Nils’s.”

“That’s good,” said Gerlof. “All graves should be looked after.”

He went on: “That wasn’t what I wanted to ask about, it

was something else … I remember you once told me you met

Nils on the alvar, the same day he … dealt with the German soldiers.”

Maja nodded seriously. “I could see it in his face,” she said.

“He didn’t say anything, but I could see something had happened.”

but he didn’t want to tell me what it was. I tried to talk

to him, but Nils fled out onto the alvar again.”

“I understand,” said Gerlof, then paused before continuing

cautiously:

“And you mentioned that you got something from him

that day …”

Maja stared at him. Then she nodded.

“I’m just wondering if you could show me what he gave you,”

Gerlof went on. “And if you’ve told anybody else about this. Have you?”

Maja sat motionless, looking at him. “Nobody else knows

anything,” she said. “And it wasn’t something I got from him, it was something I took.”

“Sorry?”

“I didn’t get anything from Nils,” said Maja. “I took it. And I’ve regretted it so many times …”

“A package,” said Gerlof. “You said it was a package.”

“I followed Nils,” said Maja. “I was young and curious. Far

too curious … so I stayed hidden behind the bushes and I watched Nils. And he went to the memorial cairn outside Stenvik.”

“The cairn? What did he do there?”

Maja said nothing. Her gaze was distant.

“He dug a hole,” she said at last.

“Did he bury something?” asked Gerlof. “Was it the package?”

Maja looked at him and said:

“Nils is dead, Gerlof.”

“It seems so,” said Gerlof.

“It is so,” said Maja. “Not everybody believes it, but I know.

He would have been in touch otherwise.”

Gerlof nodded. “Did you dig up the package when Nils had

gone?”

Maja shook her head. “I ran home,” she said. “It was later …

after he came home.”

It took a few seconds for Gerlof to understand.

“You mean … after he came home in a coffin?”

Maja nodded. “I went out onto the alvar and dug it up,” she

said.

She got up, smoothed down her skirt, and went over to the

television in the corner of the room. Gerlof stayed where he was, but turned his head so that he could watch her.

“It was one autumn day in the sixties, a couple of years after Nils’s funeral,” said Maja. “Helge was out in the fields and the children were at school in Mamas. So I locked up the house and went out onto the alvar on my own, with a garden spade in a plastic bag.”

Gerlof watched Maja struggle to lift a bluepainted wooden

chest decorated with red roses from a shelf beneath the TV. He’d seen it before; it was her old sewing box. She carried it to the table and placed it in front of Gerlof.

“I crossed over the main road,” she went on, “and after half an hour or so I got down to the alvar outside Stenvik. I found what was left of the cairn and tried to remember exactly where I’d seen Nils digging … and in the end I did.”

She opened the lid of the chest. Gerlof saw scissors, yarn, and rows of cotton reels, and thought about when he used to mend torn sails. Then Maja lifted up the false bottom and placed it to one side, and Gerlof could see a flat case lying in the secret compartment underneath.

A metal box, discolored with old rusty patches.

At least, Gerlof hoped it was rust.

“Here it is.”

Maja took out the case and handed it to him. He heard something rattling inside.

“Can I open it?” he asked.

“You can do whatever you like with it, Gerlof.”

The case had no lock, and he opened it very carefully.

The contents sparkled and shone.

Perhaps it was just twenty or so bits of glass in a case, just trinketsbut it was difficult not to see something different, something more precious. And there was a cross lying alongside them. Gerlof was no expert, but it looked like a crucifix made of pure gold.

Gerlof closed the lid, before he was tempted to pick up the

stones and roll them between his fingers.

“Have you told anyone else about this?” he asked evenly.

“I told my husband before he died,” Maja replied.

“Do you think he might have told anyone else?”

“He didn’t talk about things like that to other people,” said Maja. “And if he had, he would definitely have told me. We didn’t have any secrets.”

Gerlof believed her. Helge hadn’t been particularly talkative.

But somehow the rumor that the soldiers Nils killed had had some kind of war spoils from the Baltic with them had begun to spread in the north of Oland. Gerlof had heard them tooso had John and Anders Hagman.

“So you’ve had them hidden here the whole time?” he said.

Maja nodded. “I’ve never done anything with them, I mean,

they weren’t mine.” She added, “But I did try to give them to Nils’s mother Vera once.”

“Oh? When was that?”

Maja sat down carefully on the chair beside him, and Gerlof

noticed that she drew the chair forward so that their knees were just touching between the ornate legs of the table.

“It was a few years later, at the end of the sixties. Helge had heard that Vera Kant had started to sell all her land along the coast, that she was getting short of money. So I thought maybe she should have the stones back…”

“Did you go and see her?” asked Gerlof.

Maja nodded. “I got the bus to Stenvik and went into Vera’s

garden … It was summer, so the outside door was ajar as I went up the steps. My legs were shaking. I was scared of Vera, like most people …” Maja stopped, then went on: “A gramophone or a radio was playing inside the house, I could hear music. And voices.

She had visitors.”

“She had a housekeeper for several years, so it might have

been”

“No. It was two men,” Maja interrupted him. “I could hear

two men’s voices from the kitchen. One was mumbling, and the other one was speaking much more loudly and firmly, almost like a captain …”

“Did you see either of these men?” said Gerlof.

“No, no,” said Maja quickly. “And I didn’t stand there eavesdropping either … I knocked on the door as soon as I got to the top of the steps. The voices stopped, and Vera came hurtling out onto the veranda, slamming the kitchen door behind her. It was a shock, coming back to the village and seeing her after so many years. She’d got so thin and twisted … like a driedout rope. But she was still suspicious, she looked at me as if I were a thief or something. ‘What do you want?’ she wanted to know. No hello, no politeness. I lost it completely. I had the case in my pocket, but I didn’t even get it out. I started stammering something about Nils and the alvar… and that was probably stupid. It was stupid, because Vera screamed at me to go away. Then she went back into the kitchen. And I went back home … and she died a few years later, of course.”